Friday, August 28, 2009

At the beginning of this year, 2009, I was approached by Ulysses Press and offered the opportunity to write a book predicting what would happen in the fourth book of Christopher Paolini's Inheritance cycle. If you've come to this site you should already know that Paolini started writing the series when he was fifteen years old and to date has published three books in the series, Eragon, Eldest, and Brisingr. You'll also know that he had initially forecast that the series would only be three books in length, but got half way through Brisingr only to discover there was no way in heck he was going to be able to accomplish what he wanted without writing a fourth book.

Needless to say the third book ended with a lot of questions still to be answered - including what the title of the final book would be, how it would all be resolved, who would live and who would die, who would the third dragon egg hatch for, who would Eragon find true love with, and a host of other hotly discussed issues. What Will Happen In Eragon lV? is my attempt to answer those questions and others. Each area has been given its own chapter in the book - so if there's a question that interests you more than others - like who the third egg in Galbatorix's stash will hatch for - you can turn to that chapter and see what I've predicted.

In most cases I've tried to examine the most likely options as to what will happen and offered my opinion as to which I think is the most likely. Let's say you're interested in finding out who I think the last egg will hatch for and you turn to that chapter. The chapter starts with some background information on the topic, then I get into talking about each of the likely candidates and discuss the reasons why they might become the next dragon rider and why they might not. At the end of the chapter I'll sum up the information and give you my conclusion. The same pattern follows for pretty much each of the chapters, although some will take a slightly different format because of their subject matter.

Now, the real reason for this blog is to allow everybody out there who reads my book the chance to comment on my choices (Before you comment make sure to read the comment policy - remember this is an all ages site and I'm not going to allow any personal attacks directed against anyone or any foul language whatsoever.) What I'd really like to hear is what you think will happen and why. Remember not what you want to happen, but what you think will happen and then give some good solid reasons for your answer.

What Will Happen In Eragon lV? is being released on September 1st in the US, September 9th in Canada and the rest of world. So let me hear what you think - and try to convince me I'm wrong. You can buy What Will Happen In Eragon lV? at Amazon.com, other on line stores, and of course your local book store. If it's not the shelves be a pest and make them order a copy.

Just Who The Heck Is Richard Marcus Anyway?

Aside from being the author of What Will Happen In Eragon lV? I'm a book and music critic with the popular culture site Blogcritics.org, the editor of Epic India Magazine, a South East Asian arts and culture site. My work has also appeared in the German edition of Rolling Stone Magazine and on a regular basis at Qantara.de a German based web site that publishes in English, German, Turkish, and Arabic.
As for the rest of the information, I'm closer to fifty than forty, I'm married to a wonderful artist and musician - she took the photo of me that will be somewhere on this site and designed the tattoos you might be able to make on my forearms in said picture. We've been living together for thirteen years now and have been married for six of them. We live in the small strange town of Kingston Ontario Canada with four cats.